Why Does My Baby Sleep With Their Eyes Open?

What you are almost certainly seeing

The American Academy of Pediatrics describes the stage of infant sleep where this happens. In active sleep a baby twitches their arms or legs, their eyes move under their closed eyelids, and their breathing is often irregular. As sleep deepens into quiet non-REM sleep, twitching and other movements stop and the baby becomes harder to wake.

Babies spend a much larger share of their sleep in active sleep than adults do, and their eyelids are thin and do not always close completely. The result is a sliver of white or a slowly moving eye, usually for a short stretch soon after they go down or shortly before they wake, and usually not all night.

What is not published about it

Nothing. The NHS, Ireland's HSE, the Lullaby Trust, the American Academy of Pediatrics and Red Nose Australia have no guidance on babies sleeping with their eyes open, no advice about it, and no warning attached to it.

That absence is informative in two directions. It means nobody regards it as a risk worth publishing about. It also means anyone giving you a confident explanation, a prevalence figure or a list of causes is not drawing on a health body. Basis, run with Durham University's Parent-Infant Sleep Lab, is refreshingly honest about the same kind of gap regarding baby sleep noises: it says it was unable to find any research into the sleep noises babies make and that most information available was anecdotal. The same is true here.

Why it is more noticeable in newborns

Two reasons, both structural. Newborns spend proportionally more time in active sleep, so there is more of the stage to observe. And their circadian rhythm has not developed — Basis notes that a baby's own body clock only begins to develop from around four months — so their sleep is broken into shorter cycles with more transitions, and transitions are when eyes drift open.

Most parents notice it fading over the first months without ever deciding it stopped.

What is not this

The distinction that matters is between eyes drifting partly open during otherwise ordinary sleep and something happening to your baby.

Get medical advice promptly if the eyes roll upward or to one side with stiffening or rhythmic jerking of the limbs; if your baby's eyes are open but they cannot be roused; if there is lip-smacking, cycling leg movements or a fixed stare that you cannot interrupt; or if an episode comes with a change in colour or in breathing. It is worth being clear that no health body publishes a home checklist for telling a benign event from a seizure, which is exactly why the advice is to have it assessed rather than to work it out yourself. Filming 20 seconds on your phone is the most useful thing you can bring to that appointment.

On breathing the AAP does give a hard threshold. Call 999 — 911 in the United States — if your baby's breathing stops for more than 20 seconds, their skin turns pale, bluish or greyish, there is a change in muscle tone, or there is fever or other illness alongside it.

Separately, an eye that is persistently open when your baby is clearly asleep, that looks dry, red or cloudy, or an eyelid that will not close on one side only, should be looked at by a GP. Asymmetry is worth more attention than the fact of the eyes being open.

What not to do about it

Do not try to close your baby's eyes, do not wake them to check, and do not add anything to the cot to block light in the hope it helps. The cot stays clear: no pillows, no duvets, no cot bumpers, no soft toys, no loose bedding, no pods or nests, nothing that keeps your baby in one position.

The NHS's general advice for sleep in the early weeks applies unchanged. Put your baby down on their back for every sleep, in their own clear, flat, firm sleep space, in your room for at least the first six months. An unusual-looking sleep is still a sleep, and nothing about it changes the rules.

If it is unsettling to watch

It commonly is, especially at 2am under a night light. Two practical things help. Position the cot so you are not looking directly into your baby's face from your pillow, and use a dim yellow or red light rather than a bright one, which Ireland's HSE recommends anyway for night wakings. Neither changes anything for your baby; both make the night easier for you.

Whether to mention it at a routine check

It is worth raising at a routine health visitor or GP contact even though it is almost certainly nothing, for two reasons. It costs you nothing to have it written down, and it means that if anything else emerges later there is a record of when it started. The NHS's routine baby reviews exist partly to catch things parents were not sure were worth a separate appointment, and this is exactly that category of question. Bring a description of how often it happens, how long it lasts, and whether your baby is otherwise well, feeding and developing normally.

When to ask

Speak to your health visitor, public health nurse or GP if the eyes stay open through long stretches of sleep and look dry or irritated, if only one eye is affected, if your baby has any delay in meeting developmental milestones, or if you have seen anything that looked like stiffening, rhythmic jerking or an episode you could not interrupt. Nobody will mind you asking about something that turns out to be normal.